Trupti Patel
A report by Felicity McCall.
From the day that her trial opened at reading Crown Court in May, 2003, the similarities
between the case of Trupti Patel, charged with murdering her three infant children
at the family home in Maidenhead, Berkshire, between 1997 and 2001, and that of Sally
Clarke, were chillingly apparent. Again, Professor Roy Meadow’s evidence was a key
part of the case against Mrs. Patel, and again, her acquittal after just ninety minutes’
deliberation by the jury, discredited this leading exponent of the "think dirty"
school of paediatricians who encourage jurors with no formal medical training to
conclude that multiple cot deaths in a family equates to murder.
Mrs. Patel’s sons
Amar and Jamie died at 13 weeks and 15 days respectively; her daughter Mia at 22
days. Her fourth daughter is a healthy child. Amar was found dead on 10 December
1997, Jamie on 5 July 1999 and Mia on June 3, 2001. Throughout the five and a half
week trial, the 35 year old qualified pharmacist, had strenuously denied killing
any of the children, in the face of a strongly emotive cross examination from the
prosecution barrister, Paul Dunkels, QC. He had suggested the deaths were "tragedies
brought about by her own actions" and accused her of stopping her infants breathing,
"taking them," as he put it, "to the brink that divides life and death."
"On the 5
July , 1999, before you came downstairs, you stopped Jamie breathing and took him,
to the brink, didn’t you?" asked Mr. Dunkels.
"No, I did not", replied Mrs. Patel.
"On
3 June 2001, in your bedroom with Mia you pressed down on her chest, probably as
she lay in her crib, and stopped her breathing, squeezing the life out of her", he
went on.
"No", replied Mrs. Patel again.
She then began crying as she described the
toys attached to her daughter’s crib. Her husband Jayant, a 38 year old business
analyst for British telecom, became emotional in the dock as he described how his
wife had called him at work on the morning of 10 December 1997 when she found Amar
in his cot, not breathing. He said he arrived at the hospital as doctors were stopping
their attempts to resuscitate the child.
Mr. Patel said his wife was "devastated"
by what happened and, for weeks, neighbours would hear her crying at home while he
was at work. He told the court it was "scary" when their second son, Jamie was born,
as they feared another cot death. He then told how he returned from work one lunchtime
to find Jamie "totally floppy" in his cot. "I just realised it had happened again",
he said. "I panicked and took him to Trupti. I did not know what to do."She had tried
to resuscitate the child while they waited for the ambulance, but to no avail.
Giving
evidence on Mrs. Patel’s behalf, a leading expert in SIDS, Professor Peter Fleming,
said all the evidence suggested the three babies had died because they could not
metabolise properly and they became very ill, while appearing well. He said he could
find no evidence that they had been smothered or suffocated. Professor Fleming said
in 20 years he had seen 3 other families in which there had been 3 unexplained deaths
of babies. ..and the fact there were 3 deaths did not imply they had been suffocated.
"I can find no convincing evidence that the deaths were caused by applied or imposed
injury", he told the jury. "I can find considerable evidence that points to a metabolic
disorder ."
He said Jamie, at 15 days, was at the "peak age"for this, and that bleeding
in his bowel and low body temperature at the time of death were consistent with acute
metabolic failure.Professor Fleming, who is a professor of infant health at the University
of Bristol and a paediatrician at Bristol Royal Children’s Hospital, said there was
strong evidence that this was how Mia had died, and there was nothing to suggest
Amar’s death was unnatural.
In the summing up of evidence at the end of the trial,
prosecuting counsel Paul Dunkels again urged the jury to use " clinical assessment"
of the facts (this is of course not a clinically trained jury but one which must
depend on medical evidence as presented by men they are told are experts), and not
"high emotion." He urged them not to flinch from returning guilty verdicts, telling
them that, when they examined the evidence, "you will be sure that these babies were
killed by the defendant….it may be a conclusion you come to with a heavy heart".
He also urged them "to keep your feet on the ground" when considering that death
could have been due to a genetic or metabolic disorder.
This, despite the fact that
the children’s grandmother, 80 year old Surajben Patel, from a village in the Guajarat
region of India, had told the court, through an interpreter, that five of her own
12 children had died within a month and a half of being born. Her first child had
died an hour after birth. No explanation had been given for their death, although
doctors had attempted to save them. Evidence given from a woman who had lived her
life in a region far remote from Reading, who did not understand the language of
the court proceedings and who could not with any credibility be accused of legal
manoeuvring - yet Mr Dunkels attempted to discredit her evidence by pointing out
that neither Mrs Patel nor her mother suffered a genetic disorder. In a last attempt
to secure a conviction, he reminded the jury that the defendant need not have had
a premeditated urge to kill her babies - a momentary impulse was enough - and that
if they decided she had smothered them but not intended to kill them, they could
convict on the lesser charge of manslaughter.
As with Sally Clarke, Mrs. Patel’s husband
had remained convinced of her innocence throughout and supported her during the hearing.
He spoke of her devastation at their deaths, and said it had never once crossed his
mind that she could have harmed her babies. He described Trupti as " a really nice
Mum - loving, caring, compassionate, always considering them first.I cannot think
she would do anything bad to them."
He told of how his wife had to live at another
address as part of her bail conditions, but was allowed regular, supervised visits
to see her surviving 8 year old daughter (who has inevitably become another victim
of the process of "justice")
In the end, it took the jury just ninety minutes to return
a unanimous verdict of not guilty, on June 11th. There were cheers in the courtroom
as Mrs. Patel put her hands over her mouth and let out a sob before beginning to
shake uncontrollably as the verdicts were read out in turn .Outside the court and
surrounded by well-wishers, she said, "I am absolutely delighted. . Words can’t describe
how we’re feeling. This should never have come to court." Her solicitor, Margaret
Taylor, told the crowds outside Reading Crown Court: "Trupti Patel has spent the
last year in torment. She walks from the court a free woman."
"She wants to publicly
acknowledge the tremendous support she has received from her husband, friends and
family." "Few mothers", she continued, " will ever have to face the death of one
baby, let alone 3. Virtually no mother, however, will have to face the trauma of
being accused of deliberately suffocating her children." Mrs. Patel and her husband
Jayant have appealed for privacy to " get back to some sort of normality", and it
is here that the fallout from her not guilty verdict begins to impact and may bring
longer lasting and more widespread positive implications for any future trials.
Thames
Valley police have defended their decision to investigate, saying the jury should
" have an opportunity to decide on the evidence, which has now occurred."
The childrens’
charity the NSPCC has called for an overhaul of the way child deaths are investigated.
Spokesman Chris Cloke said, " It is absolutely vital that these tragic incidents
are investigated without stigmatising parents. We want to see systematic review and
analysis of all child deaths by teams made up of health experts, police and social
services professionals."Public Judicial Inquests should be held in any cases where
it is "beyond reasonable doubt" that the child died of natural causes. Each Coroner’s
area should have at least one specialist in child death and all autopsies on children
should be performed by a pathologist with specialist knowledge. Moreover, he said,
these changes should be introduced as a matter of urgency.
The director of the Foundation
for the Study of Infant Deaths, Joyce Epstein, spoke of the " current eagerness"
by some to view all sudden and unexplained deaths with suspicion, particularly when
there is a second death in the family- although there is a high incidence of multiple
SIDS . Virtually every national newspaper has featured editorials calling for an
overhaul of the process of investigating sudden infant deaths, even those like the
traditionally right-wing Sun, which has nevertheless defended the decision to go
to court. "Mrs patel can look the world in the eye and deserve sympathy, not suspicion",
its editorial says. "Human nature being what it is, many people would have harboured
doubts about her - now these have been dispelled." Yes, thanks to the wisdom and
courage of a jury to decide in the face of "expert" evidence.
Above all, two of these
"experts", Professor Roy meadow and Professor Michael Green, emerge from the trial
discredited. Speaking in The Guardian, a retired forensic pathologist and former
vice president of the Royal College of Pathologists, Dr Bill Hunt, slammed the "hawkish"
school of thought led by Professor Meadow, and said the advice should not be "think
dirty" but "think objective".He sees the turning point as the \Sally Clarke appeal
verdict which overturned the court’s conviction for murder, and believes experts
are now more cautious and less certain.
"It’s essential that both the police and the
Crown Prosecution Service look at both sides of the argument", he said. "If leading
experts can’t make up their minds on such an important matter,as to whether someone
has committed murder or not, how can you expect a jury to?" He said he was " very
surprised " that after Roy Meadow’s "73 million to one"quotation for the likelihood
of 2 SIDS deaths in one family, which had effectively convicted sally Clarke and
was later disproved, he had been called as a prosecution witness in Trupti Patel’s
trial."It’s almost as if they wanted to get a conviction rather than find out if
she was guilty or not."
Dr Hunt said the Clarke and Patel cases highlight "what an
inexact science pathology is", but said it must be accepted that genetics were a
factor in a large proportion of these cases. The Clarke family have welcomed the
Patel’s verdict. "It looked like a witchhunt" commented Sally Clarke’s husband Stephen,
who, like Jayed Patel, had always been convinced of his wife’s innocence. "This seems
like another waste of police, court and medical experts’ time.,let alone the trauma
of what she has gone through." The real legacy of Sally Clarke and Trupti Patel will
only become clear in time, as we see how many more cases which should never have
been the subject of court proceedings, go to trial.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org